Across nearly all industries, the business landscape is moving faster than ever before. From the exponential speed of innovation to the changing nature of customer expectations, the companies of today that will succeed tomorrow will need to be adaptable, nimble and innovative. Many companies that were industry giants just five years ago are now fading away—losing market share to scrappy, disruptive startups. In order for businesses to keep up, businesses must move quickly, be decisive and have their ears to the ground in terms of what features to add and what products to change.
This is the primary reason low-code development platforms have been welcomed with a wave of public interest in recent years. Defined, a low-code development platform is made up of software that allows individuals to program through graphical interfaces and easy configuration, as opposed to traditional programming where developers create applications from scratch. Forrester even estimates the low-code development industry will grow to $15.5 billion by 2020.
Between the increasing demand for quick turnarounds on software projects and the common request for them being delivered in bulk, the added stress on engineers in today’s market has been taxing—leading to promising adoption rates for low-code platforms. Here are four key reasons why your company should invest in a low-code development platform, and where to get started.
#1. Mobile-friendly
With 9 in 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 now owning a smartphone, and 67% of Americans who are 50 years or older owning one, it’s clear the world is going mobile. Soon enough, smartphone ownership might be universal. As a result, consumers are now expecting companies to have apps on iOS and Android as opposed to mobile experiences being an add-on or bonus. As it currently stands though, developers must program mobile applications totally separate from the desktop experiences they create for consumers. This process quickly becomes arduous and expensive, whether a company is using in-house talent, hiring freelancers or partnering with an agency.
This doesn’t need to be the case though with the help of low-code platforms. In fact, most low-code development platforms have automatic mobile creation as a built-in feature versus developers needing to code both versions separately—cutting costs and the time spent programming.
#2. Speed matters.
Across all industries making up the current business landscape, speed matters. Today, companies need to deliver projects quickly to keep up with competitors and to keep their customers happy. This shift is evident from the popularity of Scrum, agile project management, productivity hacks and even “life hack” culture in general. Just ten years ago, Myspace was at its peak and Facebook was new to the market—highlighting the rapid innovation taking place around the world.
With low-code development platforms, even businesses that lack the resources to hire top-tier engineering talent now have a chance to compete with the industry’s elite and unveil products quickly to consumers.
#3. Taking the load off your engineering department.
No matter if you have one developer working at your company or a team of 30, there’s only so much bandwidth your software engineers have at their disposal. Many seemingly small or urgent projects that come in may not get a favorable position in your company’s product pipeline. By the time the project rolls out and all the bugs are fixed, it might be too late to get solid footing relative to your competitors.
With low-code development platforms, you’re able to take some of the load and pressure off of your engineering department. Many of these urgent, pressing projects could be taken care of by someone with less programming experience thanks to the drag-and-drop nature of a number of low-code platforms. To a certain extent and depending on the complexity of the issue, anyone on your team can be a developer. By investing in low-code, you will set your company up for success by increasing your agility when it comes to creating custom business applications.
#4. Being customizable matters.
Both to existing customers and potential ones, creating custom experiences matters. Customers want to know their user experience with a company will be tailored to their liking and interests, whether through a personalized portal or a targeted marketing campaign. Yet, due to financial and logistical limitations, many companies don’t have the resources to tailor their user experience to their current customers’ every demand. Doing so would take away focus from your developers who are busy tackling other problems.
With the implementation of a low-code development platform though, you will be able to more easily enhance, omit or create features to help elevate a user’s experience. If you find out 25% of your customer base would like to see a certain change, while that percentage may not warrant a complete overhaul if you were using the traditional method of development, low-code could allow you to cater to that group by giving them what they want.
Creatio’s Solution
One company that is leading the charge in low-code innovation is Creatio (formerly bpm’online). By providing enterprise grade software that is also user-friendly and fully customizable, Creatio gives its clients the tools they need to automate tedious workflows, develop business applications, accelerate operations and more. Through this functionality, Creatio enables companies to deliver personalized solutions in minutes.
Creatio works with companies ranging from small businesses to some of the world’s most well-known brands, and is revered by Gartner as an industry leader in the Sales Force Automation and CRM Lead Management categories. With years of experience under their belt and the highest customer satisfaction rating in their industry, Creatio could be a great way for your company to begin leveraging all the advantages low-code development can bring to your organization.
Creatio also has mobile capabilities—all applications launched through their platform will automatically have a version ready for Android and iOS smartphones.
With the business landscape moving faster than ever, speed and agility is integral to the success of companies of all sizes. By investing in low-code development platforms like Creatio to help automate your business processes, create custom solutions and more, you’ll put your company in a terrific position to win in the coming years.